Submission + - Is the Obama Camp Censoring Difficult Questions? (zdziarski.com)
Nuclear Elephant writes: I don't know how long this will last after somebody notices that others have noticed, but I had several people confirm this on different machines and operating systems. It looks as if Mr. Obama's website, which has recently added a new feature called Open Government, might be censoring certain questions submitted by the American people. The website appears to be filtering visitors' ability to find certain questions, preventing them from being voted on. I've included two screenshots, showing that a search for "assault weapons" suspiciously returns zero results, while a search for "ssault weapons" brings up 15 results. Searching for similar topics, such as "assault" and "ban" or "assault" and "atf" or "assault" and "rifle" seem to also provide empty results unless part of the spelling is removed. Strangely, a search for "gay marriage" returns plenty of results, so the issue obviously isn't one of multi-word searches. Longer multi-word queries such as "environmental protection" return results too, so the problem isn't one of query length. This suggests that someone might have hard-coded certain key words to return empty, leaving those questions to rot at the bottom of the pit. It is uncertain just how many votes were cast on these questions, and whether they were voted on before this suspicious behavior started. Clearly when the questions could be found, they were considered good questions to ask. How much confidence can we put in an administration that censors the thoughts and concerns of the American people? And of equal importance, what other topics are suspiciously returning no matches?
